Thursday, October 26, 2017

US Soldiers Died in Niger. What on Earth Are We Doing There?

In our military-revering
culture, it’s a strange thing for a president to start a war of words with the
grieving families of slain soldiers.

Strange, yes. But from Donald
Trump’s campaign season feud with the parents of Humayun Khan, who died
protecting fellow soldiers in Iraq, to his recent feud with the mourning widow
of La David Johnson, who died on patrol in Niger, it’s no longer surprising.

At root in the latest spat is a
comment Trump made to La David’s widow Myeshia Johnson: “He knew what he signed
up for.” Myeshia thought that remark was disrespectful — she later said it “made me cry.”

Beyond insensitive, though,
there’s a good chance it simply wasn’ttrue.

See if you can find Niger in this map of Northern Africa. Answer belowthe fold.

Why, after all, should La David
have expected to die in a dusty corner of Niger — a Saharan country most
Americans (and, one suspects, their president) couldn’t find on a map? And
where the U.S. isn’t actually at war?

If you were surprised to learn
the U.S. has nearly a thousand troops in Niger, you’re not alone. Senator
Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who serves on the Armed Forces
Committee, told NBC he “had no
idea.” Neither did Chuck Schumer, the Senate’s top
Democrat.

Well, the surprises may keep
coming.

The New York Times notes that the U.S. now has “over
240,000 active-duty and reserve troops in at least 172 countries and
territories.” Count it again: 172 countries, out of 193 UN member
states.

Most of us remain at least dimly
aware that we still have thousands of troops in war zones like Iraq and
Afghanistan, as well as in Cold War outposts like Japan, South Korea, and
Germany. But what about the 160-plus others? And where are the nearly 38,000
troops whose location the Pentagon lists as “unknown”?

We catch an occasional glimpse
of this global footprint when a U.S. service member dies someplace surprising —
as Ryan Owens did earlier this year in
Yemen, and a Navy SEAL did several months later in
Somalia. More rarely we catch darker reminders still, when our wars abroad come
home in the form of terrorist attacks. But mostly the American people remain
every bit as in the dark as Graham and Schumer.

Americans like to imagine
ourselves as citizens of a democracy that rejects the colonial ambitions of Old
War powers like France and the UK. And yet we’ve deployed troops to literally
most of the planet, and our leading lawmakers — tasked by the Constitution with
the exclusive right to declare war — don’t even know about it.

Worse still, Congress appears to
be abetting its own irrelevance.

Earlier this year, House Speaker
Paul Ryan quietly killed an amendment by Democrat
Barbara Lee that would’ve revoked Congress’ post-9/11 Authorization of Military
Force, which has been used as a fig leaf of legality for this global war
making. And last month the Senate voted 2:1 to reject an amendment from
Republican Rand Paul that would’ve done the same.

Odds are, the real victims from
our post-9/11 wars live in countries we seldom see or hear about. But as
veteran and Army strategist Danny Sjursen writes, “the potential, and all
too pervasive, deaths of American service members demand a public hearing” too.
Especially when 16-plus years of war doesn’t appear to have made the world any
safer.

When our soldiers kill and die
in fruitless wars we don’t know about and can’t end, we’re not a democracy
anymore — we’re an empire. And perhaps a fading one at that.